Tag Archives: Tennis

Non-fiction

Humdrum

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The sun is at the center of rising in front of the patio. I sit ahead of a man who keeps coughing. It’s yet another Monday with four more days to go. I haven’t eaten so much as yesterday. It was a lazy weekend full of TV and junk food, which is how weekends will be throughout the next season and the season after. I’ll have to adjust.

I paid my speeding ticket and have to take traffic school to avoid points on my record, so my insurance won’t blast me. It’s eighty-five degrees already, and it’s still dark. The heat will only get worse. When will it start getting cool? There was an excessive heat warning yesterday when I was watching football, with a warning of a thunderstorm and flash flood. So I wonder which one it is. It can’t be both. It wouldn’t have made sense.

Anyway, I miss the days of yore, when this coffee shop didn’t have strict rules, when there was plenty of seating. Times have changed for the worse.

The shithead manager works this morning. He served me eggs without sriracha.

So I asked him, “Excuse me. Can I get some sriracha?”

“You know you can order it through the mobile app.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Oh, I must not have seen it.”

Yeah. Suck it, douche bag.

Not only have they taken away the tables, but they’ve also taken away the black forks and replaced them with cheaper white forks. The one I was using cracked in half when I cut my eggs. This company is sliding downhill. Whoever the CEO is is fucking things up and making it another fast food enterprise instead of something greater. More sooner than later, they won’t allow me to hang out and use WiFI. It’ll just be another service industry business working through mobile ordering like a pizza delivery company, where I order something, pick it up, and take the food with me out of there. I used to be able to do anything within the walls of the law, but those days have been long gone for well over a decade.

It makes me frustrated enough to chew on a canker sore in my mouth. It happened last week when I bit down on my lip when I was chewing on a taco. Now it won’t heal and go away. It’s something of a problem. Otherwise, what can I say?

A blind man tries to cross the street with his cane at the intersection. He searches for something, perhaps the button for the crosswalk. He has found it, and now he crosses the street. I’ve wondered about crosswalk buttons and why they exist. Why must a pedestrian have to press one of those things when the crosswalk light should turn on automatically? Does the stoplight have to recognize someone crossing the street? That isn’t the way it should be. The blind man has found a bench to sit on, but he must’ve changed his mind because, again, he’s crossing the street.

I watched football and tennis for most of yesterday. There were surprising upsets and not-so-surprising victories. My parents nodded off in their chairs or on the couch while I watched TV from nine in the morning to nine at night. In the afternoon, I watched Yannik Sinner beat Taylor Fritz in three sets to win the US Open title. It wasn’t much of a match. Sinner showed exactly why he was the number-one ranked player in the world. And then I watched more football while I listened to the Steelers post-game show with my headphones. We ate pizza for lunch, and I ordered tacos and a burrito for dinner at around half past six.

Now today I must work. Bummer. I’m taking a week off at the end of September and can’t wait. One employee on my team has quit his job. He must’ve found another one at another company. Good for him. He got away clean. Or maybe he quit and doesn’t have a job. Either way I envy him. He announced his departure at the last team meeting:

“Friday is my last day, haha.”

And no one acknowledged him and said goodbye. I figure it would’ve been the same reaction to anyone else who announced their resignation from the company, which is how it goes these days. How many others will burn out and quit by October or November? September will run by quickly before I know it. The training wheels are off. And next month will come when I’ll hve to meet quota expectations and turnaround times and all the fun stuff of this job. How will I succeed?

It’s getting hotter out here, and I think I’ll go back inside before I start roasting like a rotisserie chicken rotating under a heat lamp.

A bee keeps harassing me out here. Why do they do that? Am I some sort of bee magnet? Is it the way I smell? The way I dress? Why do I attract bees? I look like a weirdo running around the patio, swatting at this bee chasing me because I don’t want to get stung of course. I’ve never been stung by a bee, lucky for me, but my father has. He went jogging one morning and almost swallowed one. It stung him on the tongue. I’ve been afraid of bees ever since that happened. They’re one of many things I fear.

Non-fiction

Sober Life

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I watched the football game last night, the first one of the season between the Chiefs and the Ravens. In between plays, I was reading comments on social media. Some of them were disturbingly humorous. Others were downright shocking. Some of the posts were actual stories–objective news if one can believe.

One of them was about a Ugandan woman who ran in the Olympics whose boyfriend set her on fire. She eventually died. I don’t know how soon but what an awful way to die. Not that I wonder as much as what kind of sick individual would murder another human being in the manner he did? It makes me want to crawl into bed and not go outside. And some of the comments were about as disgusting as the act itself.

I read other threads, mostly about the game when it was on. I switched between the football game and the women’s semifinal of the US Open, where sixth seed Jessica Pegula played the unseeded Karolina Muchova. It enthralled me more than the football game. I’ve heard other people say football players are the most athletic people in professional sports, but I don’t know. I’ve watched enough tennis for the past two weeks to convince myself these players might be better conditioned. Maybe it’s my eyes. Anyway, Jessica Pegula won the match in three sets to advance to the finals after being down 6-1 in the first set. Quite a comeback!

Then I switched to the football game. The Chiefs were leading 27-17 at one point, and the Ravens closed the gap to 27-20 with under two minutes left. Lamar Jackson is nimble on his feet but still can’t chuck the ball accurately. I won’t rank him as one of the elite quarterbacks. He ended up losing the game for the Ravens after overthrowing his tight end in the back of the endzone. The tight end couldn’t keep his feet in bounds.

I read a post about sobriety. The person who wrote it said he’d been sober for a year, and in that time, no changes in health, no lost weight, and less joy in life. As discouraging as it sounded, he was honest. I’ve been sober for six years, and I can’t say my health has dramatically improved, nor have I lost much weight if any weight at all. As for joy, yes, drinking once brought me the luxury of meeting people and having fun with them at bars or at parties. But now those times have left, and they’re missed. Nothing has really changed for the better except the absence of hangovers. Of course those I don’t miss. But that’s the one benefit. It’s depressing to admit.

Oh, and I’ve saved money, a lot. I used to live paycheck to paycheck, but I still would live paycheck to paycheck if not for my benefactor. My job pays me below the level of poverty. It’s criminal given the inundation of work they’ve dumped onto me. Besides the point, I can’t say my life has improved at all. The only difference is I’ve lost one of my joys and a life of being somewhat social. Other people in the thread agreed: life is boring without alcohol. Others counterpointed with the subject of spirituality. I’ve felt nothing spiritual during my departure. Everyone is different. No one can force their higher power onto me. It begins inside.

So what shall I do? Go back to drinking? Maybe in moderation if I can control myself–the kicker. My doctor would get upset, so would my family. They’re the police. I have to take a mountain of medication each day, and alcohol doesn’t mix with the pills. I’m stuck with useless prescriptions. Who the hell said Adderall even works? I still can’t focus on even the lightest task. Maybe someday my brain will finally heal, maybe in four years when a decade has passed.

I do applaud the ones who’ve found a more joyful life in sobriety. They know the secret, the rest of us don’t. I do also encourage alcoholics and addicts to attend AA meetings. Even if twelve-step doesn’t work for them, at least they’re going out and meeting people.

Non-fiction

Labor Day Weekend

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It was a blessing to have a three-day weekend after all the work I’ve done, but now it’s over, and I must go back. I spent Saturday with my parents, and we watched tennis at my apartment. I hadn’t watched it in a while. The US Open was on, and I got to watch Daniil Medvedev. His motion is poetry: the way he serves with his feet moving lithely, the way he swings loosely with his backhand. He easily ousted an Australian in the third round in three sets with his wiry frame. I missed his match in the Round of 16, but I’ll catch him tomorrow in the quarterfinals. He may be my favorite player to watch, not to take away from Jannik Sinner, the best player in the world at this moment, who played last night against the American Tommy Paul.

When you see his name and hear it pronounced, you wouldn’t think Jannik is from Italy, but he is, or at least that’s the country he represents. Tommy was beating him in the first set, 4-1. I thought Jannik was going to lose that set with his unforced errors. He kept hitting forehands out of bounds. Tommy Paul seemed to have been beating him mentally. Jannik’s head wasn’t in the match. At one point, Tommy was up 40-0, I believe, in the game, when Jannik beat him four points straight to make it 4-2 and proceeded to win the next two games to tie the score. I knew it would happen. Sinner is a machine. He ended up winning the first set in a tiebreaker, 7-6.

I took a shower afterward and missed about half of the second set. When I came back I think Tommy Paul was up by a game. and neither opponent had broken serve. Tommy kept leading until about 5-4 when Sinner came back again and led him 6-5, but I’m not certain. The crowd was causing a ruckus, rooting for the American. That’s how it has always been at the US Open, unlike Wimbledon or the French Open, where the crowd is relatively polite. The American crowd doesn’t hold back like it’s a football game. The chair umpire had to keep hushing them whenever Jannik tried to serve because they were trying to break his concentration. But Sinner is such a cyborg that he doesn’t even let them faze him.

He led Tommy Paul in aces. His average service speed was 124 MPH to Paul’s 116, I believe. Sinner made some unbelievable crosscourt forehands when Paul sent him to the doubles lines. Sinner would slide across the hardcourt like a hockey player to retrieve those balls and defeat Tommy with multiple passing shots. Jannik won the second set in another tiebreaker, and by the third set, Tommy Paul was finished. It may have been exhaustion, but his shots weren’t as powerful, nor was his serve. He kept hitting the ball into the net when it looked like Sinner was only getting started. Jannik had saved his energy after playing his worst tennis in the first set, which he won anyway.

He beat Tommy with ease in the third set and won the match three sets to zero to make his way to the quarterfinals, where he’ll meet Daniil Medvedev sometime tomorrow. I won’t miss that match. Who knows if Jannik Sinner will win the US Open? The only major tournament he has won this year is the Australian Open, but he’s still the number-one seed based on his record. He has lost only twice in the majors this year. I expect him to be at the top for a long time.

I hadn’t watched tennis this close in years to keep up with the best in the world, both men and women. Iga Swiatek is the women’s best. She’s a machine as well, from Poland, and just as impressive to watch as Jannik Sinner.

Non-fiction

At Avila Beach II

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Day three is the last day. The circus is leaving town. The one-man circus.

I’ve had enough of this beach. The people are unfriendly. Yesterday, a barista at a coffee shop in San Luis Obispo castigated me for taking up too much space at a table. I apologized and said I would clean it up, but the lady kept giving me the stink eye, so I moved outside where the b***h couldn’t see me. That was in the morning.

In the afternoon, I rented the tennis ball machine at the tennis club where my parents were staying. We were actually staying at the inn, not the hotel, next to the tennis club. I waited until one o’clock to use it.

A short guy who managed the ball machine came up to me and said, “The machine is for club members only, not hotel guests, but I’ll let it slide this time.”

Oh, gee, thanks. What a swell person you are.

At least he helped me set up the machine. It fed the balls well, but I was too afraid to hit them onto the other court, where someone else was playing. So I wasn’t swinging perfectly and, therefore, wasn’t hitting them with accuracy. A few balls flew out, while most of them skipped into the net. I used to play high school and collegiate tennis, but I’ve since lost my strokes. They’re hard to get back after I haven’t played in a while. It was annoying to deal with. Not only that, but the machine that picked up the balls was broken, so I had to pick them up myself, which consumed a lot of time and energy. I used my watch to count the calories I was burning, and picking up the balls counted for a lot of that.

The lady in the court next to me was using another ball machine, but her ball picker-upper was working just fine. She kindly said, “You can use it when I’m done.”

A nice gesture of hers, but she didn’t finish until I finished. I’d rented the court for an hour, and she’d been hitting with the ball machine longer than I had, maybe two hours. It was too late.

So I chalked that up as a negative experience. I never want to do it again.

My parents took me to dinner at a restaurant that overlooked Pismo Beach. It was one of their favorite places. The menu didn’t grab me. I wanted something like a crab sandwich, but nothing like it was on the menu. It was all entrees. There we were, gazing out at the surfers surfing the little waves that Pismo had to offer, and none of us ordered seafood. My father ordered the lettuce chicken wraps, and my mother ordered the filet mignon. I ordered the half chicken with gnocchi, green beans, and mushrooms. We might as well have eaten at the Cheesecake Factory, but I didn’t complain.

I don’t even really like chicken. I’m still wondering why I ordered it. I wanted cookies to make up for dinner. All I’ve been doing this vacation is eating in between dealing with a******s with ball machines and baristas with dirty looks.

I think today will be a better day. We’ll eat lunch somewhere and go to a casino on the Chumash reservation, where my father once won eleven thousand dollars. I’ll stay another night in Goleta and sit in my favorite coffee shop tomorrow morning before I head back to Palm Springs. I hope the same lady won’t be working there who gave me a cheese Danish that she’d never warmed up.